Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields
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The uniformed and shackled detainees gave their declarations in a hearing room inside the state prison. When they raised their shirts, in addition to large purple bruises, some had pre-Hispanic symbols and the word “Azteca” tattooed on their bodies. Most said that they worked construction or sold things on the street and earned between seventy dollars and ninety dollars per week.
New York Times, February 21, 2008
DEADLY BOMB IN MEXICO WAS MEANT FOR THE POLICE
MEXICO CITY—Juan Manuel Meza Campos, 44, was trying to plant a bomb
in a police official’s car when it blew up and killed him on a busy avenue here last week. The blast unsettled residents of the capital, which had so far escaped much of the drug violence that has racked other parts of the country. Mr. Meza, who went by the nickname El Pipén, had links to drug dealers in a high-crime neighborhood called Tepito, where there is a lively trade in drugs and contraband goods.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, February 21, 2008
Before dawn yesterday the Mexican army arrested 8 men at different locations in the city who were supposedly working as spies for the criminal organization known as “La Linea,” composed mainly of current and former police officers. Unofficial sources said 12 were arrested.
The detainees were identified unofficially as: Luis Carlos Ramírez, César and José Vizcaíno, José Inés González, Juan Rojas, Juan Muñoz, César and Javier Ledezma, Manuel Padilla, Mario Ricardo Martínez Rosales, Francisco Muñoz Escobedo, Ricardo Ramírez.
Fearing retaliation, family members of some detainees demonstrated at the military installations, demanding that the authorities provide information on the whereabouts of their relatives. They were denied entrance and no representative of the military spoke with them. They then went to the offices of the Federal Attorney General asking where their relatives had been taken, but they were informed that they were not there.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, February 26, 2008
Federal officials reported that five bodies, two heads and three thoraxes were found buried in four clandestine graves in the patio of a house-warehouse in the Cuernavaca neighborhood at 1847 Cocoyoc Street. The house has been sealed off since January 25 when authorities confiscated 1.8 tons of marijuana.
Las Cruces Sun-News, February 27, 2008
Javier Perez Mendiola, alias “El Indio,” 41, and Adrian Juárez Juárez, 25, were putting gas in their Dodge Ram pickup at a station just a few steps from the border in the town of Palomas when assailants wearing ski masks pulled up in two cars and opened fire on them. Investigators had made no arrests and were trying to determine a motive for the killings.
Houston Chronicle and El Paso Times, February 27, 2008
Agents Seize $1.9 Million Hidden in SUV on Border; Mexican National Jailed in El Paso in One of the City’s Largest Cash Seizures Ever
Saul Sanchez, 42, a Mexican national living legally in Kansas City, Kansas, was arrested by ICE agents on charges of currency smuggling. Agents at the Bridge of the Americas used a density meter to inspect the doors of the 1992 Ford Expedition and found $1,858,085 in cash.
International Herald Tribune, Associated Press, February 27, 2008
MEXICAN POLICE FIND PARTS FROM AT LEAST 8 BODIES IN PITS NEAR BORDER IN CIUDAD JUÁREZ
A statement from the prosecutor’s office said authorities found five complete bodies, three limbless trunks and two heads in four pits.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, February 27, 2008
Bodies found in a clandestine grave now total nine, according to federal police authorities. A report stated that digging will continue and that it is not possible to say exactly how many human remains might be discovered.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, February 28, 2008
An agent of the mounted police, José Guadalupe Cruz Cisneros, known to his neighbors as “El Tyson,” was executed just a few meters from police headquarters. He died instantly in a hail of AK-47 gunfire. His wife and 12-year-old son and other close family members arrived at the scene. Cruz Cisneros left work at 7:00 P.M. and drove toward home in his 1989 Datsun pickup. He was chased by several armed men in two vehicles; one closed him in as the occupants of both vehicles opened fire. Cruz Cisneros died inside his truck from bullet wounds in his abdomen, thorax and face.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, February 28, 2008
FAMILY MEMBERS OF DISAPPEARED PERSONS SEARCH
“NAR COFOSA”
After several bodies were found in a clandestine grave in the Cuernavaca neighborhood, family members of disappeared persons demanded information from the state and federal prosecutors’ offices. Since last Monday, relatives of three missing persons voluntarily gave DNA samples in order to determine if any of the bodies found recently might be their loved ones.
El Paso Times, February 28, 2008
Jaime Hervella, founder of the Association of Relatives and Friends of Disappeared Persons, said an anonymous telephone tip led Mexican police to the house at 1847 Cocoyoc Street. “I received a phone call from an informer that at such and such a warehouse where they recently picked up marijuana, you will find some of the individuals on your list.” Hervella’s group maintains a list of about 200 men who disappeared in Juárez since the early 1990s and are believed to be victims of drug traffickers.
El Paso Times, February 29, 2008
FEDERAL CASE UNVEILS INNER WORKINGS OF AZTECA GANG
Barrio Azteca assists the Juárez drug cartel in the importation of drugs and with killings in exchange for narcotics at discounted prices, Assistant U.S. Attorney Margaret Leachman said. The gang also offers members sanctuary in Mexico from U.S. law enforcement.
In one of the strangest twists in this month’s court hearings, it was revealed that the gang operates a drug rehabilitation center in Juárez for “la familia,” a code name for its members, located a few blocks from the U.S. border.
The rehab center was necessary because the gang, which has dealt heroin on El Paso’s streets, had some of its members fall prey to the highly addictive drug, gang enforcement officers said.
MARCH
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, March 1, 2008
IN TWO MONTHS, 76 MURDERS
Yesterday, the last day of February, there were four murders in three different zones of the city.
El Paso Times, March 1, 2008
JUÁREZ—A body tossed off a cliff landed in the backyard of a home minutes
before 3 A.M. Friday in the Felipe Angeles area of Juárez, police said.
The unidentified dead man’s hands and feet were bound with tape, which was also wrapped around his head. He was wearing gray pants, a blue sweater with black stripes and black shoes.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, March 2, 2008
Elements of the Federal Police discovered three bodies in a clandestine grave in the Colonia La Cuesta. In total, 12 bodies have been exhumed in investigations during the last 10 days.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, March 2, 2008
Families of disappeared persons denounced the lack of information and of a place where they can provide facts to assist federal authorities to identify the bodies found recently in Colonia Cuernavaca.
“We are fighting, because after we have given so much information and help, they recover the bodies and take them away. They should have a place here where the people here could provide DNA and other information. A place where we could go and say, ‘You know, we are family,’” said Patricia Garibay, member of the Association of Relatives and Friends of Disappeared Persons.
“There is no way, there is no one who wants to take our information. There are 200 people with files at hand, but we have no data bank, no one has given us any idea where we can go nor to whom we could speak.”
Garibay was interviewed about the discovery of the remains of at least 9 persons buried in clandestine graves in the patio of a house in Colonia Cuernavaca. She said that the excavation revives the hopes that hundreds of family members feel, that finally, they could end the anguish at not knowing the whereab
outs of their loved ones, the open wounds left by their loss.
And this week, she added, with the discovery of the remains of at least 9 persons in the house at Cocoyoc 1847 in Colonia Cuernavaca, the families renewed their search.
“You must realize that for us, it is like returning to the first day of the disappearance; yet again, they open up our wounds, and each time something like this happens, it pushes us to try to do something,” she said.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, March 2, 2008
Ricardo Fuentes Garcia, 38, an infantry captain in the Mexican army, was assassinated in a hail of AK-47 gunfire by an armed commando in Ciudad Juárez, Sunday at 3:00 A.M. as he was driving a red Dodge Neon in Fray Junipero Street. Captain Fuentes Garcia was head of the Rural Defense Corps in the Valle de Juárez. So far the defense forces have lost 33 men across Mexico in 2008, the majority of them in states with a high level of organized crime.
Another murder. José de la Luz Arreola García, 42, died at the Clinica Santa Maria after being knifed several times.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, March 3, 2008
Due to increasing criminality, Juárez residents are converting their houses into fortresses. Sales of closed circuit systems, access controls and other protection systems for houses and businesses have increased 50% in the last three years.
Las Cruces Sun-News, March 4, 2008
JUÁREZ VIOLENCE CONTINUES AS 7 ARE KILLED IN 3 DAYS
On Monday night, three unidentified men were shot to death in a vehicle strafed by gunfire in a supermarket parking lot. On Sunday, Ricardo Fuentes Garcia, 38, possibly a Mexican army officer, was found fatally shot in the chest in a Dodge Neon at Paseo del Triunfo de la Republica and Fray Junipero. Fuentes had identification stating he was a Mexican army captain.
On Saturday, Luis Alonso Marrufo Armendariz, a 38-year-old officer with the Chihuahua State Investigative Agency, was shot in his police vehicle by people in a gray sports car on Manuel Cloutier Avenue. He died and another police officer traveling with him was wounded.
The body of Raymundo Martinez Alcantara, in his 30s, was found in a pickup truck Saturday on Tecnologico Avenue and Nayarit Street. He had been shot to death. José de la Luz Arreola Garcia, 42, was pronounced dead from stab wounds Saturday at Santa Maria clinic.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, March 4, 2008
Three men were killed in a hail of AK-47 gunfire in the parking lot of a mall in San Lorenzo. At the close of this edition, none of the dead had been identified. More than 100 shots were fired from a Windstar, Tacoma and Chevrolet Silverado that closed in on the Nissan Altima and fired at the occupants. The vehicles of the aggressors fled and could not be located despite police roadblocks. Minutes later, the Paseo Triunfo de la Republica, a main thoroughfare in the city, was completely closed causing traffic chaos.
ArrobaJuárez.com, Ciudad Juárez, March 4, 2008
Two of the three transit cops abducted Monday in San Lorenzo were found, injured and unable to speak. Identified unofficially only by their last names, Molina and Uribe were found abandoned near a house whose residents called an ambulance. The director of the Transit Police said, “We’ve found two of our men, but Lieutenant Z5 is still missing.”
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, March 4, 2008
Yesterday, two women accused the Mexican army of being responsible for the disappearance of their husbands. “I was talking on the phone [early last Saturday morning] with my husband when he said ‘here come the soldiers’ and he dropped the phone but it was still connected and I heard him scream and I heard them hit him and since then I haven’t heard anything from him,” said Julia Escobar. She and Maridani Lopez are from Novolato, Sinaloa, and they traveled to the border to look for their husbands, who remain missing. They first went to the military headquarters where no one met with them and afterward to the offices of the Federal Attorney General.
Unofficial sources report that the detained were sent directly to Mexico City as the case is being handled by the Special Prosecutor for Organized Crime Investigations, whose offices are in the capital.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, March 4, 2008
The Mexican army yesterday presented 4 individuals in their custody to the media, among them an ex-state policeman from Sinaloa. The detained include Jorge Ibarra García, 32, from Novolato, Sinaloa, who professed to having executed 20 persons in a two-year period and to belong to a criminal organization known as La Linea. They also presented José Ángel Pérez Ibarra, 25, from Culiacán, Sinaloa, who, according to the army, is an organized crime hit man who confessed to killing 21 persons since 2006.
New York Times, March 5, 2008
MEXICO: BACKYARD BODY COUNT AT 14
The federal attorney general’s office said agents had uncovered 14 bodies buried in the backyard of a house in Ciudad Juárez, a city that has gained infamy for its gangland slayings and the unsolved murders of hundreds of women. The agents began digging at the house in the neighborhood of La Cuesta, across the border from El Paso, last month, after a drug raid. They first found the dismembered bodies of nine victims, some of whom died more than five years ago. Five more bodies were unearthed in the last week. Prosecutors have yet to determine why the victims were killed, but they noted that agents found 3,700 pounds of marijuana in the initial raid.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, March 5, 2008
PUERTO PALOMAS DE VILLA—Two people were found executed yesterday before dawn near the fence separating this border community from the neighboring country, their bodies riddled by multiple high-caliber bullet wounds to the head and thorax causing instantaneous death. The dead were identified as Luis Armando Murillo Ponce, alias “El Nalguitas (Little Butt),” 26, and Javier Pardo Soto, 22, alias “El Marciano (the Martian).” This new finding is added to the list of executions in the region in the last 2 weeks, including a municipal police official from Nuevo Casas Grandes.
Last week, this border community witnessed a fearful wave of violence that has caused the authorities of the neighboring country to guard hundreds of children who cross to attend school and have been endangered by executions on busy streets in broad daylight.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, March 5, 2008
WOMEN EXCUSE AGGRESSIVE SPOUSES; PREFER ECONOMIC SUPPORT
Many women pardon the violence committed by their husbands and avoid pressing charges against them because they need their economic support. “It is common that they refuse to denounce them because if their husbands go to jail, they will have no resources to survive,” reported the Center for Prevention and Attention to Women and Children in Situations of Violence.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, March 6, 2008
Lieutenant Carlos Adrián de Anda Doncel appeared alive at 8:07 P.M. outside the San Lorenzo Bakery two days after he was abducted by an armed commando. He was immediately taken to the hospital, where he was reported in stable but delicate condition with wounds from beatings on various parts of his body as his abductors had tortured him to obtain information. He was reported to be hysterical. Gonzalo Díaz Rojero, director of the Municipal Transit Police, expressed gratitude to the kidnappers for freeing officer de Anda Doncel alive.
The officer had been abandoned with hands cuffed behind his back and his head covered by a hood at the entrance of the San Lorenzo Bakery. The bakery owner, Juán Rodriguez, said the man had asked for 3 favors: a glass of water, to call his wife and that he close the business so that his attackers would not return for him in the presence of his family and coworkers. Red Cross Ambulance 156 arrived and took him to the emergency room, under a heavy escort from fellow transit police.
Don Juán Rodriguez, the bakery owner, said that the man had been extremely terrified and after talking to his wife, he began to cry.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, March 6, 2008
Under heavy guard, Secretary of National Defense Guillermo Galván Galván made a stealth visit to Juárez yesterday for about 2 hours as part of a tour of the northern region of the country where a battle is under way against organiz
ed crime.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, March 6, 2008
According to statistics released by authorities, for every 5 victims of domestic violence, only one perpetrator receives therapy to prevent new attacks.
El Diario, Ciudad Chihuahua, March 8, 2008
A confrontation before dawn today in the Rosario neighborhood of Chihuahua City left 7 presumed narco-traffickers dead, 4 arrested, and 3 soldiers and one official of the Federal Police injured. The identities of the dead were not revealed by the military nor by the Federal Preventive Police.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, March 9, 2008
A man was found dead lying in a pool of blood in the northbound lane of
the Casas Grandes highway, and another was taken to the hospital after both were apparently shot.
El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, March 10, 2008
MUNICIPAL POLICE OFFICERS HUNTED DOWN: 1 DEAD, 3 INJURED
Víctor Alejandro Gómez Márquez was killed; Mario Alberto Rodríguez Arámbula, Moises Casas Camargo and Commander Ismael Villegas Frausto were injured in an ambush in which 2 police patrol vehicles were chased, surrounded and then attacked by AK-47 rifle fire from gunmen in two other vehicles on Avenida Paseo de la Victoria. Villegas’s name appeared on the list of police officers to be executed posted on January 26.